My colleagues at the SPACE TELESCOPE SCIENCE INSTITUTE in Baltimore are doing great work on sonification (representing data with sound). They developed a program that adds an audio component to graphs of data.
Watch this presentation Hearing The Light on YouTube for more details.
Then listen to this podcast to hear their reflections working on this project during the pandemic.
I will be writing more about sonification in the future. Stay tuned.
This post highlights websites where people can search for or request the creation of tactile graphics. These projects let people share their expertise and equipment and they offer a way for people to distribute the files or the completed tactile graphics.
See3D is a non-profit organization that manages the printing and distribution of 3D printed models. People who are blind can request a model, and anyone with a 3D printer can volunteer to print it. The site has details about making or filling a request.
BTactile is a website that allows users to perform a keyword search across the databases of several libraries worldwide. The search feature includes check boxes to filter results by kind of material (3D print, braille, tactile drawing etc.). Search results include the graphic name, repository, and most files are free to download under a Creative Commons license.
The Tactile Library contains diagrams made and donated by teachers of blind children. The database can be searched by subject and filtered by the child’s age. It is free and there is no registration or licensing required.
The American Printing House for the Blind maintains a Tactile Image Library serving teachers of blind students. An account registration is required to use this database.
In addition to the tactile libraries listed here, people can refer to my post on finding 3D models.
On this inauguration day, January 20, 2021, I am highlighting an important project documenting a historical president. Franklin D. Roosevelt (known by his initials FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States from 1933-1945. He was the architect of the New Deal and the Commander-in-Chief during World War II.
FDR also had a physical disability. In 1921, he contracted polio at age 39 and he became a wheelchair user.
FDR visited wounded veterans while remaining in his wheelchair, but he wore steel leg braces that allowed him to stand at public events.
The FDR Memorial commemorates his leadership during the Great Depression and World War II. However, when it opened in 1997, it did not accurately represent his physical disability.
More than 50 disability organizations from across the country supported the FDR Wheelchair Statue Campaign. Sixteen Roosevelt grandchildren agreed that FDR should be shown as a person with a disability. The FDR Wheelchair Statue was dedicated in 2001.
The FDR Memorial Legacy Committee is a project of the National Council on Independent Living that documents this campaign through an archive of oral histories and media clips.
The announcement of this archive states that:
“The FDR Memorial Legacy Committee (FDR Committee), as part of the DC Community Heritage Project (DCCHP), proudly unveiled the initial archives chronicling the history of the fight for disability representation” that “was led by people with disabilities from 1995-2001.”
Please visit the archive to learn about this important campaign for disability representation.
“During the unveiling event, disability rights advocates Judy Heumann and Dr. I King Jordan reflected on the impact of the campaign to represent FDR as a disabled president and the collective work that still needs to be accomplished to ensure equitable disability representation. Dr. I King Jordan exclaimed, “Disability is not talked about. People talk about diversity, equity, inclusion and disability needs to be included in those conversations. This archive is a visual way to do that.”
I wholeheartedly agree with Dr. Jordan’s statement. It was my honor to evaluate the archives for their accessibility, and my privilege to learn about this overlooked aspect of presidential history.
In December 2020, as I reflect on the year, I am struck by how completely the closure of physical spaces pushed activity online. My work was no exception. Meetings became conference calls, physical exhibits moved to websites, and in-person conferences were transformed into online presentations.
collaboration was another theme for this year. I am thankful for the contributions of my smart and talented colleagues who contributed to the work that I produced in 2020.
I found myself reflecting on how responses to the coronavirus pandemic affected people with disabilities. Here are essays that I wrote with colleagues for an online exhibit called
Redefine/ABLE: Challenging Inaccessibility
The Interconnectedness of Covid-19 to Discrimination Against The Disabled
Bearing Witness to The Ableism Embedded Within The Pandemic
A major theme of 2020 as finding ways to safeguard access to touch objects.
In this post written for the American Alliance of Museums, colleagues and I strongly recommend that museums produce re-usable tactile handouts so that individuals can borrow their own touch objects.
Staying In Touch Addressing Concerns to Allow Tactile Exploration at Museums
This post summarizes a presentation about accessible touch objects.
MCN-2020 Presentation Accessible Touch Objects
Here is another essay that I wrote for the Redefine/ABLE exhibit about tactile art before and during a pandemic.
Early in 2020, I presented work about museum exhibits before the pandemic. As far off as that seems now, there are still valuable data for making improvements when physical museums re-open.
Assessing Attitudes of Blind Adults About Museums
Here is an article that Jo Morrison wrote summarizing the papers included in our MuseWeb 2020 conference panel.
Voice User Interfaces And Multi-modal Accessibility
Finally, 2020 saw the release of one of our papers that was delayed in the publication process.
Last week, I gave a presentation on accessible touch objects in partnership with my colleague Lauren Race from the NYU Ability Project. Our talk was part of the MCN2020 virtual conference. Here are the highlights and links for further reading.
Most information at museums and historic sites is presented visually, but some people learn through tactile exploration. For accessibility, we need to be considering all senses when presenting information at museums.
Yet, tactile access has faced looming threats, notably the lack of expertise and funding, before Covid-19, and the current pandemic is accelerated these issues.
Some museums have responded to Covid-19 by closing hands-on exhibits with tactile components. For example, the Please Touch Museum extended its closure into 2021.
Knowing that touch objects are threatened, it is important to determine which are worth saving in the future.
Lauren described interviews that she conducted with 15 museum access specialists from art museums and historic sites across the United States. Then she considered common themes from their responses in conversations with 6 accessibility experts who are blind or have lo vision.
There are 4 findings.
• 1. Tactile experiences must be preserved
• 2. They should be consistently created
• 3. They read as infantile when poorly-crafted
• 4. They cannot be replaced by audio (verbal description) or digital-only solutions. People who are blind receive touchless experiences secondhand, filtered through the observations of a sighted person.
We made the following recommendations.
•Tactile experiences must be preserved
•Digital fabrication over poorly-designed techniques
•Provide tactually accurate reproductions
•Choose materials that can withstand frequent cleaning
•Establish tactile design guidelines
For my section of the presentation, I discussed ways to preserve tactile access despite Covid-19. I described my other projects that complimented Lauren’s interview findings.
People are problem solving in the moment. When the pandemic began, I had ongoing conversations with tactile artists about ways to safeguard tactile access.
Two colleagues, Ann Cunningham, and Matt Gesualdi and I identified specific examples drawn from our work that we proposed as models for safe practices during the Covid-19 pandemic. We described this work in a blog post for the American Alliance of Museums.
Staying in touch: addressing concerns to allow tactile exploration at museums
I will summarize with this quote.
“We imagine a scenario where visitors could borrow tactile handouts, use them for reference as they tour an exhibit, and then return them to the museum for treatment and later re-use.”
That blog post included photos of small- and large-scale examples of tactile handouts. At small scale, the 3D-printed replica of a stone spear point can be manipulated with one hand. The attached wooden coin is a QR code that when scanned directs a smartphone to read more information about it such as might be found on an exhibit label.
At larger scale, people can be encouraged to maintain physical distance as they explore separate tactile panels. This idea is loosely based on an interactive art installation titled “Mission to Nocterra,” created by Matt Gesualdi. He incorporated use of antibacterial wipes into the exhibit with a story line that the puzzles were alien artifacts that must be protected from human germs.
Highly-skilled tactile artists can create accurate tactile reproductions using hand-crafted techniques. These individuals plan and construct their work very carefully and they account for scale and accuracy. With questions of high-fidelity in mind, we ranked different techniques by their cost in the same blog post.
Returning to Lauren’s interview findings, we recommend digital fabrication methods such as 3D printing over poorly-designed, hand-crafted techniques. In our opinion, digital fabrications are preferred for the accuracy of tactile reproductions. This is contrasted with the analog nature of most poorly-designed tactile objects that her interview findings indicated were produced by interns or volunteers with no training in tactile design.
Due to Covid-19 and safety concerns, we recommend fabricating touch objects from materials that can withstand frequent cleaning. This would favor plastic or acrylic resin commonly used to fabricate 3D-printed replicas.
We mentioned other work that supports accessible touch objects. Fortunately, we are not the only people seeking ways to safely conduct tactile exploration. Here is an international example.
Tactile Studio posted their proposed solutions including the development of a tactile sanitation station for touch objects.
I am encouraged by these proposed solutions because the work to preserve access to tactile objects in museum exhibits is ongoing and it will require sustained efforts in the Covid-19 era and beyond.
I created MuseumSenses last year, but I added most of its’ content after the Covid-19 pandemic started. Since many of us are spending a lot of time online now, I decided to write this post to draw back the curtain and reveal the process of creating a website and sharing content from it to my social media feeds.
##Step 1: Choose a Domain
Most people are familiar with common domains like .com, .org, and .edu, but there are other options. A domain name is the internet equivalent of a street address and purchasing a web domain is like buying a vacant lot. Just as titles are registered to property owners, domain names are assigned to the users who purchased them. There are directories of registered domains, and searching these sites is the best way to determine if a name is for sale.
##Step 2: Choose a Web Hosting Service
Creating the website that will appear when a domain name is entered into the address bar of a browser is like constructing a building on a vacant lot. Selecting a web hosting service is like commissioning an architect to design a building, and then hiring a construction company to build it. I suggest that anyone wishing to build a website should carefully evaluate the various web hosting services because they differ in features and pricing. Some services combine domain registration with hosting.
Creating a website that is accessible to all users, including people with disabilities, is like building ramps and stairs to enter the house. This article is a great overview of common accessibility problems.
Designing sites to be accessible can save time and money when compared to retrofitting them for accessibility later.
##Step 3: Creating Content
Creating content is the most enjoyable part of building a website. It is like moving into a new house, painting the walls, and arranging the furniture. The content on a website is accessible if it complies with guidelines set by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
Some considerations when designing an accessible site include:
• text color contrast
• properly-labelled buttons and edit boxes
• heading structure
• alt tags (improves accessibility and search engine optimization (seo)
There are many more considerations, and I suggest that before people design a website, they should familiarize themselves with any accessibility guidelines provided by the web hosting service(s) that they are thinking of using. For example, this is a WordPress site, and accessibility information from WordPress can be found at this link.
##Step 4: Sharing content
There are scheduling tools that will automate the sharing of content from a website to specific social media accounts. To extend the comparison of domain and street address one last time, This process is like leaving a forwarding address at the post office to send mail to a new location.
As with websites, it is important to be mindful of accessibility considerations when creating and sharing social media posts.
facebook.com/accessibility
twitter link
I will finish this post with a word of caution about comments online. When I launched this site, I set comments to require my approval. I was bombarded with spam and messages to visit porn sites. That is why I always turn off commenting on my posts and pages. If you wish to reach me, please use the links in the social menu found on every page.
This post discusses the 3D printing process and its potential to enhance tactile experience for blind people. There is a critical resource shortage where tactile graphics are concerned, and 3D printing is a technology that can help to bridge the gap. I strongly encourage the interested reader to access the resources linked here for more details.
Robert Jaquis Writing in the Braille Monitor (April 2012), explained the problem this way. “Sighted students have access to a wide variety of images in books, videos, and the Internet, but blind students must rely on text or verbal descriptions or the occasional tactile graphic.”
He explained that tactile 3-dimensional replicas are particularly useful for conveying the shape of exceedingly small, or extremely large, objects. I strongly agree with this statement.
Once, I examined a 3D-printed replica of the DNA helix. It was about 2 inches long, and I held the replica in one hand tracing the spiral shape with the fingers of my other hand. In that moment, I finally understood the description of the DNA molecule as a “twisted ladder”.
I am sure that I had read or heard the words “spiral” and “ladder” used to describe the structure of the DNA molecule before examining the 3D-printed replica. However, I did not intuitively make the connection between the description of the DNA molecule and the physical spiral shape of the double helix until I had time to explore a tactile representation of it.
I will return to this powerful idea near the end of this post. For now, I will discuss the 3D printing process and link to examples of projects that can increase tactile access for blind people.
There are three steps to producing a 3D-printed replica of an object.
• Scanning the physical object and saving data in a digital file
• Creating a 3D model of the object
• Sending the 3D model to a printer that creates a physical replica of the object
In this process, a physical object is converted into a digital model that can be viewed on a screen. Tactile access can only be achieved by sending the 3D model to a 3D printer that produces a physical replica of the object.
Many individuals and organizations have completed the first two steps of the process—scanning objects and using that data to create 3D models of the scanned objects. The models can be viewed online or downloaded to be sent to a 3D printer.
Check out my post about finding 3D models on the web.
Computer-aided design (CAD) software lets people create 3D models.
In some instances, blind people who access computers with screen readers, that provide voice output, can access features of these CAD software packages from a text-based command line.
For example, OpenScad is a free software package for creating 3D models. Claire Kearney-Volpe created this curriculum that shows how some features of the software package can be used with a screen reader.
Here is another useful resource for learning OpenScad. link
However, researchers at Stanford’s Shape lab wrote this paper Explaining one drawback to using OpenScad. Although The program has a text-based command line for inputting measurements, the output is displayed as a visual graphic on a computer screen. These researchers prototyped a design in which a blind person receives a tactile representation of the model on a refreshable braille display connected to the computer.
The team at Tactile Universe uses a different CAD software package called Blender to create and print their 3D models. Read these technical blog posts to learn more about their process.
A quick google search indicates that people can create 3D models in Blender using the python programming language. Read this manual for instructions.
Not all cad software packages have functionality with a screen reader. In my opinion, Tinkercad is not accessible because there are many unlabeled buttons on the home page. The designers did not label their buttons properly with alt-text, and so I did not create an account or evaluate their 3D modelling tools.
Blind people benefit from the last stage of the process when a 3D model becomes a physical object that can be touched.
To do this, the 3D model is exported to a stereolithographic (STL) file that contains detailed instructions for the material to be extruded by the printer.
Here is a step-by-step guide for exporting a 3D model into an stl file.
Here are two more examples of how 3D printing can be used to increase tactile access for blind people.
Mike kolitsky wrote this paper that showed how 3D printing can be used to create physical replicas of digital learning objects, so blind students can have access to visual material presented online as images. Examples of 3D Prints made from 2D photos are at the end of his paper.
More recently, two co-authors and I wrote a paper describing another way to access information about 3D replicas. We attached QR codes to 3D-printed replicas of stone projectile points (arrowheads). Scanning these QR codes with a smartphone prompted the user to access a webpage with more information about each projectile point.
I know that many people are exploring the educational benefits of 3D-printing, and I expect to learn of other projects in the future. Meanwhile, I hope that the resources that I have gathered here will be useful in this endeavor.
I’m pleased to announce the publication of Designing a portable museum display of Native American stone projectile points (arrowheads) to ensure accessibility and tactile quality written with Joe Nicoli and Donald Winiecki in the Journal of Blindness Innovation and Research.
We describe making 3D-printed replicas of artifacts found in the collections of the Maryland Archaeological and Conservation Laboratory. Then we prototyped a design that attached QR codes to the replicas by a lanyard.
Scanning these QR codes with a smartphone prompted the user to access a webpage with more information about each artifact. Participants at a Tactile graphics conference were successful in scanning the QR code with their smartphones and following the link to the associated webpage.
I also included this project in another paper about using smartphones to access information about exhibits. Start by reading this blog post from April 2020 to learn more.
This post is part of an ongoing series covering aspects of 3D printing from scanning objects, to creating digital 3D models, and then printing the digital files as physical 3D replicas. As I explored this topic, I collected links to many outstanding resources.
• People who have access to a 3D printer can browse online libraries for downloadable files.
• People who do not have access to a 3D printer can check out organizations that will print and ship 3D-printed replicas to them.
Here is a list of online libraries that offer 3D models downloadable as digital files that can be sent to a 3D printer. Many of these links were recommended by members of the Tactile Art and Graphics Specialist, TAGS mailing list during December 2019. Thanks everyone!
Some organizations maintain online libraries of models that are specific to their area of expertise.
NASA offers printable models of space craft including rockets, rovers, shuttles, and the International Space Station. For more information, read this post about searching the NASA library for a model of the Perseverance Rover.
The Smithsonian 3D digitization database contains models of many different objects from animal skulls to presidential portraits, and much more. The models can be viewed onscreen or downloaded as printable files.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) offers biomedical 3D printable files and 3D printing resources.
Some services will print and ship 3D replicas to individuals upon request. The examples below highlight paid, or free, models.
The Shapeways marketplace offers prints searchable by category including jewelry, phone cases, tabletop game accessories and more. The company uses industrial-grade printers and offers models in several types of plastic or other materials like steel, bronze, brass, silver, gold, wax, porcelain, or aluminum.
Kraftwurx Is a company that serves 3D designers. It lets them upload files, specify materials, and order prints that can be sent to their customers.
See3D is a non-profit organization that organizes the printing and distribution of 3D printed models for people who are blind.
final thoughts
Many organizations maintain online libraries of 3D models. Some make downloadable files available, and others also ship physical 3D-printed replicas. Anyone seeking a specific model can search the sites listed here or search the web for other sources.
My second essay written for the Redefine/ABLE exhibit is titled Please Do Touch the Art
The essay is a discussion of tactile art. When I wrote the first draft in February 2020, it was about the need for more tactile objects in museums.
Then the coronavirus pandemic started, touching objects became taboo, and that essay required significant revisions. Now, it includes recommendations about safely touching objects in museum exhibits, and it links to a few resources. I offer this essay as a conversation-starter because I plan to revisit this topic in the near future.
